Traffic generators are commonly utilized in generating data traffic having characteristics suitable for testing a given communication system design. Such traffic generators may be implemented in hardware or software. Data traffic characteristics such as the time distribution of packet arrival are critical for testing communication system performance parameters such as buffering and scheduling capacity.
By way of example, high-speed network transport mechanisms such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and Internet protocol (IP) are being utilized to provide new classes of communication services, including multimedia, voice and video-on-demand. In order to properly simulate the operation of network processors and other system elements typically used to support these and other services, accurate predictions of system performance under various network traffic scenarios are generally required. Traffic generators are configured to generate the data traffic for the various scenarios of interest.
It is generally desirable for a given traffic generator to provide data traffic output which closely models the “real-life” behavior of packet arrival timing in the system. For example, such behavior often involves so-called burst arrival, when a certain number of packets arrive substantially back-to-back, that is, one after another without any significant intervening time between arriving packets.
Conventional traffic generators suffer from a number of significant drawbacks. For example, the configuration flexibility of conventional generators is unduly limited. As a result, a given conventional traffic generator typically will not support a sufficiently large number of protocols, packet size distribution models, packet arrival time distribution models, parameter sequences, or other features.
Another significant drawback of conventional traffic generators is that such generators do not provide a traffic file format which allows association of different traffic flows with a single output interface.
As a result of these and other drawbacks, users are often unable to generate traffic that accurately reflects the desired network traffic scenarios.
It may therefore be necessary in a given application to utilize multiple customized traffic generators to provide the requisite data traffic, or to construct elaborate prototypes, both of which lead to excessive costs in the simulation process.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a traffic generator which exhibits a higher degree of configuration flexibility.